The double transit

Every skipper knows about lining up two objects ‘in transit’ to keep the boat on a straight track in a cross-tide. What’s less obvious is monitoring both sides of a gap such as this harbour entrance at Honfleur in the Seine estuary. Cross-tides run very hard here, so it’s important to steer so that the boat hits that entrance around dead centre, but there’s no leading line to follow. The answer is to watch both pier heads and make sure that the background is ‘opening’ from both of them at once. If one starts revealing less behind it while the other shows more, you’re on the slippery sideways slope.